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Legal and Compliance Department Effectiveness

Aligning your legal and compliance resources to your business needs

 Who I Work With

Mid- and Small-Cap

Public Companies

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  • Looking to enhance its resources and improve practices

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  • Needing an independent assessment of resources and structure of the legal or compliance department following a merger

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  • Looking to instill a legal operations discipline in its team

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  • Assessing whether its current compliance structure meets business needs

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  • Looking for help coaching and mentoring team members

 

PE Firms

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  • Looking for an assessment of the legal or compliance functions of a recently acquired portfolio company

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  • Needing to rationalize the legal or compliance functions following an acquisition of a portfolio company

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  • Preparing to IPO a portfolio company

Business Owners/​

Family Businesses

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  • Considering hiring an in-house lawyer or head of compliance

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  • Assessing whether its current legal or compliance structure meets its business needs

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  • Looking to reduce costs and/or improve the quality of an existing legal or compliance team and build better alignment with the business

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  • Wanting to improve outside counsel relationships or reduce outside counsel costs

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  • Needing help coaching and mentoring legal and compliance team members

Moving People

What I Do

Business Needs Assessment

  • Interview business leaders to:

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  • Assess business needs and risk tolerance

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  • Determine current strategic alignment of the legal and/or compliance functions to the business

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  • Identify service gaps or misalignment

Capabilities Assessment

  • Interview legal and compliance team to:

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  • Understand current structure, skills and experiences

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  • Determine cause of any gaps or misalignment

 

  • Assess need for additional resources, tools and training​

Program Baseline Assessment

  • Inventory existing program and assess maturity of overall legal and compliance program

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  • Review existing policies and practices

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  • Evaluate legal and compliance program against key government guidelines

 

Recommendations

  • Recommendations regarding changes in:

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  • Legal and compliance structure

 

  • Leadership and staffing

 

  • Roles and responsibilities

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  • ​Use of outside counsel and other service providers

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  • Policies and practices

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  • Training and tools

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Team Development

  • Help fill gaps with new hires, outside counsel or other services providers

 

  • Provide one time or ongoing training

 

  • Assist with talent and leadership development, coaching

 

  • Help facilitate cross-functional relationship development

Operational Improvements

  • Develop tools and implement practices standardized to your needs:

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  • Onboarding/evaluating outside counsel and other service providers

  • Budgeting

  • Software to automate manual practices

  • Policies and training

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  • Establish or enhance:

 

  • Compliance function or help recruit chief compliance officer

  • Policies, training and communication

  • Management oversight and tone at the top

  • Risk identification, mitigation and continuous improvement 

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What makes me different

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  • Over 20 years of experience with successful public companies, including as general counsel and corporate secretary

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  • Trusted advisor to the C-suite and the Board of Directors with reputation for instilling an operations discipline in the legal department

 

  • Successfully recruited, developed and coached legal team members with an emphasis on continuous improvement and leadership development

 

  • Experience assessing compliance programs, with an emphasis on developing policies, training and communication and reporting protocols, and emphasizing risk identification, mitigation and improvement

 

  • Board member and corporate secretary experienced in governance, audit, and executive compensation matters, board fiduciary duties, risk oversight, and shareholder engagement/activism

 

  • Ability to communicate and interact effectively at all levels of an organization

 

  • Able to provide an independent assessment on how things are currently done and implement best practices from my personal experience scaled to your needs

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